Police call for Muslim help in safety fight

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The NSW Deputy Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, has pleaded to Sydney Muslims to work with police to "keep Australia safe" and prevent a terrorist attack he fears is virtually inevitable.

Mr Scipione's call came as Muslim groups wrote to the Prime Minister, John Howard, urging him to set up an anti-terrorism summit as part of a campaign against Islamic extremism, in the wake of the London bombings.

Mr Scipione, who heads the police counter-terrorism command, said plots had been foiled in Sydney. He was operating on the basis of when, not if, a terrorist attack would happen.

He quoted an IRA warning made in 1984 to the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher after the assassination attempt on her: "We've only got to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils proposed the summit in a fax sent to Mr Howard yesterday. It would address inflammatory literature, the training of imams and a proposed migration restriction on radical overseas clerics, said the organisation's president, Ameer Ali.

"It must be bipartisan … and you can't leave any faction out. We can't risk them being alienated and driven underground," he said.

Dr Ali played down suggestions that Australian Muslim leaders should sign up to a fatwa. Five hundred British Muslim leaders did so on Tuesday in condemning the London bombings.

A Victorian Muslim MP, Adem Somyurek, called on the Government to establish an Australian Muslim council to educate Australian Muslims and accredit imams. "At present, Muslims have pulled down the shutters. They are not marching or writing to newspapers or on talkback [radio] - and that plays into the hands of the extremists who say 'they will never like you - they are Christians and you are Muslims'."

Mr Scipione, in an interview with the Herald, called on Muslim leaders to use their "eyes and ears" to help police.

"We would want them to work with us to keep Australia safe … to allow us to enjoy the lifestyle that we do. This is the best country in the world; we don't want that to change. There is an obligation, but it's not just on Islamic leaders - it's on the entire community."

He said he had not seen any evidence that young disenfranchised Muslims were being recruited for attacks, but "there are no guarantees in this business".

"We have foiled a plot in Sydney, not that long ago, that revolved around Willy Brigitte, and there is no doubt in my mind at all that that was a plot," he said.

Mr Scipione said a two-hour teleconference involving state and federal counter-terrorism agencies had taken place the morning after the July 7 London bombings, which claimed 55 lives. The NSW police had decided to increase patrols in the city and at train stations.

The Government decided Australia's threat level should be kept at medium in the absence of "any specific advice of any threat".

Mr Scipione believed there were "radical elements within certain communities and it would be far better if they weren't preaching their radical views".

"We have interest in a number of people … we continue to monitor those that are worthy of our close attention," he said.

Asked if he thought Australia was more of a target because of its role in Iraq, Mr Scipione said: "I've read some recent reports that suggest we are one of the 'coalition of the willing' … The commentaries would then suggest we are very much a target, based on our stance globally. But that's the reality, that's the way it is."